Russ Douthat's column in the NYT makes some insightful observations about Dan Brown, his novels, and what their success tells us about the state of religion in the US. Douthat hits the nail on the head here...and the rest is worth the read as well.
In the Brownian worldview, all religions — even Roman Catholicism — have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea that any one of them might be particularly true. It’s a message perfectly tailored for 21st-century America, where the most important religious trend is neither swelling unbelief nor rising fundamentalism, but the emergence of a generalized “religiousness” detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.
We once said God was truth. Then we said all gods were truth. Now we're saying nothing is true. And I'm not trying to be one of those dumpy abysmal backward-looking Christians longing for the days of unchallenged Christendom. I'm really interested in what the Church looks like and how we talk about Jesus in this context.
